Rethinking of Participation in Workshop of Rural Planning

Through the Action Research of Rural Planning in Aomori Prefecture

Abstract

In this paper, I explore some issues of participation in rural development through the action research in Aomori Prefecture. At first, by the review of works of rural planning and action researches on organizational and rural development, I clarify three issues on participation : 1）how can we arouse the ownership of stakeholders? especially, through arousing sense of crisis or appreciation of stakeholders? 2）how should be anybody included as participants? especially, should we simply adopt the famous rule of “putting the last first” ? 3）how can we manage the process of stakeholdersʼ participation adaptively? Secondly, I examine these three issues through the action research whose main material is the records of my own facilitation in more than 81 workshops of rural development projects in Aomori Prefectureʼs 18 municipalities. As result, by the comparative analysis of main three or four municipalitiesʼ cases, I conclude on above-mentioned three issues : 1）for arousing the ownership of stakeholders, we should stimulate nor their sense of general crisis nor of self-appreciation but their sense of proper crisis pertained to their live concern. 2）for promoting the self-organizational participation, we should not put the last first simply and hastily but at first level the relationship between stakeholders and external experts towards sequential putting the inferior superior among stakeholders. 3）for managing the stakeholdersʼ participation adaptively, we should accept the transition of stakeholdersʼ concern and promote stakeholders including local government staff to share their consistent goal that we researchers should also promote them to put into words.